Back to nature

For some people it was still business as usual. Two days after the American nightmare, somebody placed on the windscreen of the car I had so skilfully parked next to his in a multistorey car park in Soho, "Learn how to park, arsehole!" Admittedly, I had parked my car at a slight angle, but it had been a tight squeeze, and I had been very clever to get in there at all without grazing the side of my neighbour's vehicle, which was occupying rather more than its fair share of space.

In any event, I had hoped that people might have been at least briefly distracted from such concerns as their fellow citizens' parking abilities by the unspeakable events in New York and Washington. But some people seem to be so chained to their petty, everyday obsessions that they have no emotion to spare for anything else - not even for the murder of what is estimated to be around 5,000 in New York.

It was, actually, a horror that was exceptionally difficult to come to terms with. The easiest bit was to sympathise with the victims and the bereaved. It would, for example, be a very hardhearted or unimaginative person who did not feel anguish at the sight of people leaping hand-in-hand to certain death from the upper storeys of the World Trade Centre. The pain and despair that would have preceded such a decision must have been beyond endurance.

It was a natural response to feel solidarity with the American people; and by promising to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States, Tony Blair was articulating a sincerely felt desire. But the expressions of support for the US from countries all over the world reflected fear as well as sympathy. This was a fear based on deep uncertainty about how the US would respond.

It was all very well President Bush announcing that his country was now engaged in the first war of the 21st century, and saying that "now war has been declared on us, we will lead the world to victory". In terms of casualties, the terrorist attacks on the US were certainly suggestive of full-scale war. At least twice as many people died in New York as at Pearl Harbour; and when one considers that it took five years for German aerial bombing to kill 43,000 Britons during the second world war, the deaths of 5,000 people in one morning is a terrifying amount.

But war is usually taken to mean an openly declared conflict between nations, not an undeclared one between one nation and an unknown collection of individual enemies. Osama bin Laden was quickly declared to be the chief suspect as organiser of the attacks, but the Guardian reported last week that Bin Laden's network is active in 34 countries. And the Americans believe that his may not even be the only terrorist network involved.

With Mr Bush promising to punish not only the terrorists who carried out the attacks, but any nation found to have been harbouring them, one sensed a kind of panic in the instant pledges of support from all and sundry. Yasser Arafat rushed to donate blood; and among all the nations of the world, Iraq was the only one to tell the US that it had reaped what it had sown. Roused to anger and bent on revenge, America knows not yet where to strike; and few people are entirely confident that they will escape unscathed.

The attacks could hardly have caused more terrible casualties. But if there had been no casualties, I would not have been entirely sad at the loss of the World Trade Centre. The great New York skyscrapers of the 1930s - the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building - were not merely marvels of engineering, but structures of architectural beauty that symbolised the American spirit of adventure. They literally reached for the skies.

But the World Trade Centre, built after everyone had learnt how to construct skyscrapers, comprised a couple of ugly square towers interesting only for their height. Far from representing American aspirations, they were ponderous monuments to what America had already achieved in terms of wealth and power. And whoever decided to make them taller than the Empire State Building was guilty of gross insensitivity.

This was such a terrible tragedy that one hoped that it would somehow change human nature for the better. It has, to be sure, generated much heroism, compassion and generosity of spirit. But even in the United States, there have been outbreaks of racism against Arab and Asian Americans, and fraudulent attempts to profit from the disaster by unauthorised soliciting of money for the relief efforts. And in Britain, I don't expect the white van driver to change his ways.